The regulator gave the CBC a pass because of its public broadcast status.

“A one-year extension is necessary to guarantee over-the-air viewers in some mandatory markets do not lose access to the signals of CBC television stations and have sufficient time to find alternate means of accessing them,” the CRTC said in its ruling.

The extension will affect around 1.4 million Canadians that could have lost their CBC signal had the 22 transmitters been switched off at the end of the month.

The public network will switch, in all, 25 local TV stations to digital at the same time rival private TV stations countrywide do so on Aug. 31, 2011.

Those TV stations fall within 28 Canadian markets, including provincial and national capitals, where the CRTC has ordered that they be served by digital TV signals on Aug. 31.